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Department of Geography and Environmental Sustainability

College of Atmospheric and Geographic Sciences wordmark. Where the land meets the sky. Home to three academic units. Nine career tracks. Rated the number one school of aviation in the country by Flying Magazine. New professional pilot helicopter track options. Number one regionally in sustainability education. The largest meteorology program in the country. Number one nationally in severe storm research. Geography and environmental sustainability, aviation, and meteorology. There’s only one College of Atmospheric and Geographic Sciences. The University of Oklahoma wordmark.

The Department of Geography and Environmental Sustainability

Our mission is to conduct innovative and socially relevant research; to expand students’ intellectual vistas via critical perspectives and valuable tools and skills; and to catalyze sustainable human-natural systems.

We seek to shape a sustainable future for Oklahoma and beyond by creating a community of interdisciplinary scholars and leaders who aim to comprehend the Earth’s human-natural systems.

 

Department of Geography and Environmental Sustainability logo.
 

#1

Regionally in
Sustainability
Education

 

3

Specialized
research
clusters

 

9:1

Focused
Student-to-faculty
ratio

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Degree Options

Environmental sustainability with a landscape with windmills in a field.

Environmental Sustainability addresses how societies can meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. The degree offers three different areas of concentration: culture and society, planning and management, and science and natural resources.

Geography with a landscape of a rocky coastline along the ocean.

Geography is an integrative field that studies people and the world in which they live and the discipline consists of two primary fields: human geography and physical geography. Both of these disciplines use GIS technologies and other analytical tools such as statistics, modeling and qualitative approaches.

Geographic Information Sciences with a map of Oklahoma in the backround.

Geographic Information Science is one of the most rapidly expanding areas of study and employment in the U.S. addresses how geographic information systems and remote sensing (aerial photography and satellite imagery) are used for gathering, analyzing and visualizing all forms of geographically referenced information.

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Launch your career by studying Geography at The University of Oklahoma!

Find your Future

Find the Bachelor's degree that's meant for you

Take your education to the next level

Find out why our research enterprise is like no other

See all the opportunities a path at DGES can offer

DGES Upcoming Events

DGES Summer Writing Group.
DGES Summer Writing Group

The DGES community (and anyone else interested) is invitied to be a part of our Summer Writing Group for quiet writing time, optional accountability goals, and peer support. You are welcomg to come and go as your schedule allows. 

Meetings will be held on Tuesdays 8-11 in room SEC P110, Wednesdays 11-2 in the SEC library and will rotate coffee shops for Friday meetings from 8-11. Please see poster for details.

Pizza Party Time June 12 in SEC 510 11:30-1:30

DGES will be observing Pizza Party Time this Thursday, June 12th, from 11:30-1:30 in SEC 510. The DGES community is invited to come and share in the feast of Pizza Party Time.

DGES Calendar Events


DGES News

Congratulations to Alyssa Rutz on being awarded Best Capstone Paper and Audience Favorite Poster.
Congrats Alyssa Rutz; Best Capstone Paper & Audience Favorite Poster

Congratulations to Alyssa Rutz for being awarded Best Capstone Paper and Audience Favorite Poster for her capstone presentation "Sowing Black Resilience: How Community Gardens Serve as Spaces for Sustainable Justice and Collective Agency"

Alyssa's advisor was Carrie Leslie.

Congratulations Bailey Williams; Best Capstone Poster.
Congratulations Bailey Williams; Best Capstone Poster

Congratulations to Bailey Williams on being awarded Best Capstone Poster for her project: Utilizing LiDAR to Assess Eastern Redcedar Encroachment: Deriving Tree Variables, Measuring Change in Extent, and Creating DBH Models.

Bailey's advisor on the project was Tim Filley. 

Congratulations! Liam Thompson
Junior Liam Thompson Publishes "Assessment of convection-permitting hydroclimate modeling in urban areas across the contiguous United States"

Liam Thompson, a junior and a double major in the University of Oklahoma’s Department of Geography and Environmental Sustainability (DGES) and School of Meteorology (SOM), recently published a research article titled Assessment of convection-permitting hydroclimate modeling in urban areas across the contiguous United States as the first author in the Journal Urban Climate. This paper is an outcome of his undergraduate research project funded by the DGES in summer 2024, during which he evaluated the performance of CONUS404, a long-term, 4-km continental-scale hydroclimate simulation in U.S. cities. Liam conducted this research while working as a DGES-funded Undergraduate Research Assistant under the guidance of Dr. Chenghao Wang.

Learn more

Congratulations to Landon Ryder; Best Capstone StoryMap

Congratulations to Landon Ryder on being awarded Best Capstone StoryMap for his spring 2025 capstone StoryMap. Landon's advisor was Todd Fagin. You can view Landon's StoryMap here.

congratulations "boomer zoomers" Geo Bowl Team, 2nd place champions 2024.
Two DGES Undergraduate Students Awarded Provost’s 2025 Summer UReCA Fellowships

Congratulations to Alison Holderbaum and Helen Wagner, two DGES undergraduate students, on being awarded the Provost's 2025 Summer Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity (UReCA) fellowship! The Summer Fellowship is intended to provide support to enable students to perform undergraduate research and creative activity over a ten-week period during the summer. The award also recognizes advisors to the students; Dr. Randy Peppler and Angela Person are advisors to Helen Wagner and Dr. Scott Greene is the advisor to Alsion Holderman.

Congratulations Sergio Sobenis Madrid on winning best capstone StoryMap and audience favorite StroyMap.
Congratulations Sergio Sobenis Madrid; Best Capstone StoryMap and Audience Favorite StoryMap.

Congratulations Sergio Sobenis Madrid on being awarded Best Capstone StoryMap and Audience Favorite StoryMap. You can view Sergio's StoryMap here

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Liam Thompson Named a 2025 Goldwater Scholar

Congratulations to Liam Thompson being named a 2025 Barry Goldwater Scholar!

See Recipiants


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